Didn't Hit The Lottery but Close...

Greetings Collectors,

The "find" I speak of did not happen recently but actually two years ago today. The Washington Gold Dollars came out earlier in the year and the exact day I stopped at the bank is one I do not remember. It was not too long after these dollar coins had been released when reports started coming in that some of the coins had missed a part of the new minting process concerning the "edged lettering". More and more reports were coming in and as each new issue of Coin World and Numismatic News would arrive in my mailbox, there were more articles about these "flawed" coins. I really did not pay much attention but did, out of curiosoty, start to take mental note as to where these coins were showing up. It seems that the majority had been delivered to Atlanta and from there the coins were "popping" up all over south east Georgia and north east Florida.

Now I had been going into my local "Bank of America" branch since I opened an account in the late 1990's and this bank had been the source of all the State Quarters rolls I had been getting since 1999. As soon as a state was released, this bank would always get a shipment. I would always get at least two rolls and would save at least one and would always send one out to Boulder Co. to a buddy of mine and he would send me a "D" mint roll for my "P". When the Presidential Dollars were to be released, Jerry informed me that he wanted two rolls instead of the regular "one". I still remember spending the $100 for the four rolls I picked up from the bank. We would talk most every week or so and when he had his D rolls we would them send our respective rolls to one another. When it dawned on me that coins were being found in Jacksonville, I thought to myself, "Could it be possible that any of my Washington dollars are the "plain edge" ones? "Naw.. I couldn't be that lucky. The more I thought about it the more excited I became and at the same time, the more distraut I became, thinking it would be just my luck that if I had any, I had more than likely already sent them off to Jerry and now he had them. I drove all the way over to the bank where my boxes were as this small branch I have just mentioned, did not have safety deposit boxes. I had forgotten which box I had put them in and this was a couple years ago and I did not have anything resembling "order" in the way I put things into the boxes at that time, so I had to hunt for them. When I found them I wanted to open the rolls in that tiny room at the bank but I was able to hold off 'til I got back to the house.

From this moment forward, I remember all of it very clearly. As soon as I got home I went upstairs, tossed the two rolls onto the bed and put on an Eagles CD. I then laying on the bed, leaning on one arm, began to unwrap the first roll. I could not believe what I was seeing. For the first second or two all I could see was blank edges. As I sat up and all in just a matter of a very few seconds, I had the roll carefully unwrapped and was spreading those gold dollars across the comforter, being careful not to let one touch another. I then began to count. In this first roll I had seventeen out of twenty five with no edged lettering. I let out this wild hoop which caused my daughter to come out of her room and down the hall to mine wanting to know what was going on? I told her and as "greed" started to overwhelm me, I began to unwrap the second roll and when it was exposed, there was not a single one in it. Momentary disappointment followed by elation were a couple of the emotions I was feeling, almost at the same time. All I can remember is that I had a zillion things going "fast forward" through my brain and one of them was, I gotta call Jerry. He wasn't home so I left a message and when he called later that evening, he was way ahead of me. As soon as he had heard that the plain edge coins were showing up all around where I lived, he opened his also. He did not find a single one.

Well one of those things that was going through my mind was how high would they grade? and what was happening on e-bay? Looking back, I should have sold them all then as some of the first ones were selling for many "hundreds" of dollars but came down very quickly to a couple hundred dollars for "66's", $150 for 65's and about $100 for MS 64's. I sent them all off & when they came back several weeks later from NGC, I had #10 MS-64's and #7 MS-65's. Not a bad haul even though I now have two "D" mint rolls of Washington Dollars unopened, and zero "P" mint rolls. I still feel very lucky to have found what I did. In the next mailing to Jerry with some P mint quaters, I enclosed an MS-65 so he would have one as well. Needless to say when errors are being reported, I pay a little more attention as to me, the guy who never wins anything, had a pretty good day on that Dec. day. I had 17 coins out of, which I think they estimated at 35-50,000 coins that had missed that last step in the "minting process".

The picture I leave with you are three coins that came out of the roll in which I found all those plain edge coins. It appears to have a "rougher" "sandblasted" type of burnished "rays" shooting outward from the center of one of the coins and in the areas you see on the other. The third coin has what looks like a "die goudge"? on the rim. I am not much into errors except those #17 coins I just mentioned so I really don't know what I have. I just remember the coins looked different and kinda cool so I set them aside in flips. If any of you know what I have I would apreciate it if you could drop me line. I have never seen "rays" like this on any other coin and if I got the one with the "so-called" die defect in change, I would think it was intentionally done. But these were bank wrapped rolls direct from the FED so I think this is an error as well, done at the mint, or some kind of damage, maybe done by the machines that do the "rolling". I really don't have a clue.

Anyway I hope all of you are having a great safe week and that most of you have finished with whatever you are going to do with your "sets" for the upcoming awards. Oh yea, I got my 4-coin Lincoln Cent proof sets yesterday and while I know they will never be rare, the two sets I got look real nice. I took a picture of one of them and will share it with you all later if someone else does not post a photo of one.

Happy Collecting! WKF